


Shower Day

by jupiter_mechanism



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Multi, Polyamory, lonely!Gerry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-20
Updated: 2020-12-20
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:01:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,564
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28201293
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jupiter_mechanism/pseuds/jupiter_mechanism
Summary: A quiet moment between Martin, Gerry, and the power that will always have a grip on both of them.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Gerard Keay/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist
Kudos: 20





	Shower Day

**Author's Note:**

> Suggested listening: 'Holding Pattern' by Angus MacRae.

He was on the balcony, of course. The cooling weather seemed to draw him there, twining the mist that followed him into its own. Twining both through the railing on which he leaned, as if to tie him and the damp afternoon together and in place. To last.  
Martin stepped out into the smell of exhaust and, somewhere, sweet decay, and shut the door quietly behind him. Not that it seemed to matter. In silence or at a shout, Gerry always knew when he was no longer alone.  
He tilted his head to his shoulder, and the mist lost some of its grip on his long black hair. The rest continued to drift, caught in the weather.  
His eyes held all the streets’ drizzling grey, and a flatly spoken question.  
“Thought you might like some tea,” Martin explained, and raised one of the mugs he carried. Their sides already sheened moon-bright with moisture, the conflict between comfortable warmth and a chill that wanted to be everywhere.  
He could feel it creeping through the thick weave of his sweater, recognizing him as well.  
Gerry studied the mug for the moment that always seemed to come between him and solitude and speaking. A moment of docking, decoupling from something else. The cigarette between his lips had forgotten fire but still bled a steady haze, coarser threads knit into the stillness that surrounded him always.  
He tilted it from lips to fingers and set it on the rail, inert the moment he was no longer touching it. No longer capable of burning; his fingers brushed cold against Martin’s as he accepted the mug.  
“Thanks,” he said, into the steam, claiming it as he did. Another veil between him and the world, breath-stitched, patchwork and torn.  
Martin turned his back to the railing, and leaned into its comforting solidity. Iron that never creaked, screwed into concrete smooth and new. Brickwork that never leaked. Everything fitted together, and inside, it was warm.  
“So,” he ventured, “Do you want to talk about it?”  
A sharp glance through the mist. Not quick, but edged. “About what?”  
Martin gestured over his shoulder, at the city he couldn’t see. “Why you’re out here. You know he worries about you.”  
Gerry cast a glance at the closed glass that separated them from the flat. The light inside, and warmth, a separate, incompatible atmosphere. The steam rising from the mug tried to shroud his face, too sheer to hide the wavering in his grey eyes, lips. The decision made to smile, devil-may-care at the edges and broken in the centre.  
“And you don’t?”  
“Not really,” Martin shrugged. “I know what it’s like.”  
Gerry considered that, taking it into the stillness. Turning back to face the railing, to stare at the city painted, impressionist, in fog and rain.  
Clutching his mug with fingers too tight and cold. Already the steam rose from it in thinner, fitful tatters.  
“I guess you do,” he acknowledged. “You never went all the way, though, did you? You got far enough for it to ask you, but not quite far enough to say yes.”  
Martin nodded. The city at his back, solid iron at his back, and turned a finger in lazy circles above his mug. The steam followed it, responsive and delicate, a thread unravelled from a greater mass he could still feel. Distant, present, always.  
“I almost did,” he said. Softly, and let the steam fall. The mist, body of the fog, body of the great solitude that existed everywhere in potentia, seemed to sigh around him in resignation. “There are still times I wish I had. It’s not a good place to be, but it’s sure, you know? You always know where you stand with loneliness.”  
Gerry lowered his head. A gesture that would have been almost imperceptible if not for how the world moved with him, the way he seemed to tug at its strings. Tied, and tying, and so cut off from everything else. Listening, and breathing steam, and silence.  
“You never have to wonder if you’re wanted,” Martin mused on. Remembered. It still seemed so close at times, a step sideways from being afraid. A place he could be, if he wanted. Present, always. “Or how long it’s all going to last. Or if anyone secretly hates you, or can’t stand the sight of you, or...it’s just safe.”  
It sighed. The body of the fog, not sinking resignation, but subtle, glowing ascendance. Like the echoes in a cathedral’s rafters, acceptance of due praise. He could still feel it so clearly.  
He smiled. Small and into the steam, a secret shared with chamomile.  
“But then, that’s all you ever get to be, is safe,” he concluded. “It takes everything else. Even the chance for anything else. You never get to wake up and just...be happy about where you are and who you’re with.”  
“Are you gloating?”  
His smile evaporated. He frowned down at Gerry, but black hair hung between him and whatever secrets the other man’s eyes would have whispered.  
“What?”  
Gerry rolled his head, hair, eyes. A glint of grey, but no secrets. Sheathed, but still sharp, always. Edged and ready to cut the world before it could cut him.  
“I said yes,” he pointed out. “Remember?”  
“Well, yes. But you’re here.” Martin gestured again to the city, the waiting, patient warmth of the flat, the balcony and its solid, comforting angles. “So obviously it’s not as much of an end as it wants you to think.”  
Gerry seemed to take that as well, into himself, the stillness. Claimed like an echo with no one to hear. Studied like an artifact of a lost civilization.  
Accepted with a slow nod. A deliberate lift of his head, to the drizzle-not-quite-rain, unshielding his face.  
A moment. Martin had learned to wait.  
“I always knew she was moving too fast for me,” Gerry murmured at last. A sip from his mug, a moment’s warmth before he continued. “Gertrude. I knew there’d come a day when she wouldn’t slow down for me to catch up. I can’t say I predicted the brain tumour, but it was obvious from the start that a person was only with her so long as she didn’t have to look over her shoulder for them. She never looked back.”  
“Sometimes I think, from what I’ve heard about her, she must have been lonely, too. Or Lonely. You know.”  
“Maybe.” Warmth and chamomile. Shreds of steam stealing across his pensive, fog-lost eyes. “No. I don’t think so. The loneliness wasn’t the point for her. It was just what happened naturally, along the way.”  
“Is that so different from either of us?”  
“I suppose not.” He shook his head. A swaying, potential shelter of black hair, a thought of retreat, set aside for the time being. “Maybe. If there is a difference, I think it’s that she never stopped to look around and notice she was alone. Once you do that, it’s there, waiting for you.”  
Distant, present, always. Martin nodded.  
“You’re right,” Gerry agreed. “It’s safe. It’s the first time I really knew...lying in that hospital bed, realizing she wasn’t coming back, was the first time I knew where I stood with everyone. At that point- after all those years of fighting- I finally didn’t see a reason not to say yes.”  
The mist circled, affirmed. Tendrils to his body, tied and cut off from everything else. Kept. Separated.  
Perhaps for good. But he was there.  
Martin set a hand on Gerry's shoulder. Cold always, and frail somehow, flinching subsurface, expecting to be hurt, still. But solid – but there.  
“Come on,” he said. “He’s going to be home any minute. Let’s head inside.”  
Gerry lowered his head, assent, but his gaze still clung to the city. A whispered promise of life out there in the fog, shimmering light; he turned from it only under the gentle guidance of Martin’s hand, and stepped forward as if actually reaching the balcony door was an afterthought. Moving because he’d been made to, still half-lost to the fog and the past. Still half-present in all the places where he had been left behind.  
Martin let his hand slide to the other man’s elbow. Not to guide, but to hold, to hold him there a moment longer, after all.  
“Gerry?”  
A moment of questioning grey eyes, over-the-shoulder glance. A moment of waiting, and maybe someone else would have thought of something better to say. Something that made it better all at once.  
But all Martin knew how to be, all he had ever wished for in the fog, was a light. Something to move towards, and, if he could wish for more, if he dared, then a voice. His own name in someone else’s shout, a voice to call him home.  
“I’m happy you’re here,” he said. “And I still will be tomorrow.”  
Gerry stared at him a moment longer. Taking, considering, still a part of the mist. Still halfway somewhere else, always, but there. Held, and letting himself be held, and, just barely, just so someone else who understood could see, smiling.  
Saying nothing. But turning back to the balcony door in such a way that his elbow fit better in Martin’s grasp, and leading the way.  
The mist would follow them inside. It always did. But in the light of home, it was almost invisible.

**Author's Note:**

> You're the one who told me my hair looked better black.  
> You're the one who told me to never look back.  
> You're the one who asked me if I'm feeling okay.  
> I said, "I'm fine,  
> It's just a sitting-down-in-the-shower day."
> 
> \- "Shower Day", The Amazing Devil


End file.
